The house on Willow Lane was old—older than the town itself, some said. Its warped wooden frame creaked in the wind, and its windows, cloudy with age, stared out like unblinking eyes. Eleanor had inherited it from her grandmother, a woman she barely knew, who’d lived there alone until her death two winters ago. The place smelled of damp wood and faded lavender, and though Eleanor wasn’t superstitious, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the house didn’t want her there.
She’d moved in a month ago, after her divorce left her with nothing but a suitcase and a lingering ache for her old life. The solitude suited her at first. The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road, and the silence was a balm after years of shouting matches with Tom. But then the tapping started.
It began on a Tuesday night, just past midnight. Eleanor was in bed, half-asleep, when she heard it: tap-tap-tap. A deliberate rhythm, soft but insistent, coming from the bedroom window. She sat up, heart thudding, and stared at the glass. The curtains were drawn, but the sound was unmistakable—like fingernails rapping lightly against the pane.
“Tom?” she whispered, though she knew it couldn’t be him. He was three states away, probably drunk in some bar. Still, the tapping had a familiarity to it, a cadence she recognized. It was the way he used to knock on their apartment door when he’d forgotten his keys—three sharp taps, pause, three more. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap.
She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and crept to the window. The night outside was pitch-black, the kind of dark that swallowed everything beyond the glass. She hesitated, then parted the curtains just enough to peek out. Nothing. No figure, no movement—just the skeletal branches of the oak tree swaying in the wind. She let out a shaky laugh. “It’s just the tree,” she told herself. “Branches hitting the glass.”
But the next night, it happened again. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. This time, she didn’t wait. She flung the curtains open and pressed her face to the window, scanning the yard. The oak tree was still, the air calm. No wind, no branches. Her breath fogged the glass as she listened, and then she heard it—a faint voice, muffled but clear enough to make her stomach lurch.
“Ellie… let me in.”
It was Tom’s voice. Low, gravelly, the way it sounded after a long night of whiskey. She stumbled back, her hands trembling. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. She’d spoken to his sister two days ago—Tom was still in Ohio, alive and well, or at least as well as a man like him could be. She grabbed her phone and dialed him, just to be sure. It rang four times before his voicemail picked up: “This is Tom. Leave a message, or don’t. I don’t care.”
The tapping stopped as the call ended, and the silence that followed was worse than the sound.
By the third night, Eleanor was a wreck. She hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten much beyond coffee and toast. She’d checked every lock, wedged a chair under the front door, and kept a kitchen knife on her nightstand. But when the clock struck midnight, the tapping returned. Tap-tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. And then the voice: “Ellie… it’s cold out here. Let me in.”
She didn’t go to the window this time. She sat on the bed, clutching the knife, telling herself it was a trick of her mind, a hallucination born from stress and loneliness. But the tapping grew louder, more desperate, and the voice became clearer, tinged with something unnatural—a wet, gurgling undertone, like someone speaking through a throat full of water.
“Ellie… I miss you. Open the window.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, tears streaming down her face. “You’re not Tom,” she whispered. “You’re not him.”
The tapping paused, and for a moment, she thought it was over. Then came a new sound—a slow, deliberate scrape, like something dragging itself up the side of the house. The window rattled in its frame, and the voice spoke again, closer now, pressed against the glass.
“Then who am I?”
Eleanor screamed and bolted from the room, slamming the door behind her. She ran downstairs, fumbling with her phone to call the police, but the line crackled with static. Through the noise, she heard it again—tap-tap-tap—this time from the living room window. She dropped the phone and backed against the wall, staring at the curtains as they twitched, as if something outside was brushing against them.
The tapping spread. Tap-tap-tap from the kitchen. Tap-tap-tap from the back door. It was everywhere, surrounding her, a chorus of invisible hands begging to be let in. And then the voices started—not just Tom’s, but others. Her grandmother’s frail whisper: “Eleanor, it’s me.” Her childhood dog’s whine, followed by a scratchy bark. A friend who’d died in a car accident years ago: “Ellie, why won’t you help me?”
She slid to the floor, sobbing, as the house shook with the sound. The windows groaned under the pressure, and the air grew thick with the smell of wet earth and decay. She didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually, the tapping stopped. The voices faded. The silence returned, heavy and suffocating.
When dawn broke, Eleanor packed her bag and left. She didn’t look back at the house, didn’t stop to lock the door. She drove until she reached a motel two towns over, where she collapsed into a dreamless sleep. She told herself it was over, that she’d escaped whatever was in that house.
But that night, in the motel, she woke to a familiar sound. Tap-tap-tap. It came from the window, six stories up, where no one could possibly be. She didn’t open the curtains. She didn’t need to. She knew what was out there—or what wasn’t. And she knew it would follow her, tapping and pleading, until she let it in.